Skip to content
“Modern USHC for fans of 70s sci-fi novels, chainsaws playing in key, and waking up feeling like you have to apologize just for existing.” - A/V Club
“The musical equivalent of riding Space Mountain on LSD” - Rolling Stone
“A horrific display of brutality that has too much of a sense of humor for how awful it actually is; a second-hand centerpiece to a world that’s closing in on you all the time. If the closing scene of the movie ‘Pieces’ was a punk record, this would be it...tasteless, claustrophobic, and grotesque.” - Chicago Reader
“Imagine the hangover after the weekend at a music fest, when the speed is still working its way out of your system and you’re shaking all over trying to piece together the moments that prefaced the pain you’re in now. When you plug your ears to shut out the world and retreat into your own head for a minute, Future Shock is tinnitus ringing in your skull. All you can do is pray that you don’t have to hear it lingering inside your ear canal forever.” -Pitchfork
“Future Shock is all hard angles and soft light. Pallets of secondary colors fill every shot, offsetting the violence with a childlike simplicity. If Kubrick had directed Tank Girl - if that cartoonish violence had been presented with a steady hand - this would be the soundtrack.” - New Yorker
“World bad. Future Shock good.” - Time Out Chicago
Our take: Demo cassette from this Chicago-area band that plays catchy, mean hardcore with a whirring synth bulking up the sound. The riffs are catchy, burly, and mean, reminding me of bands like Glue or C.H.E.W. in how they maximize intensity without sacrificing an ounce of catchiness. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention their fellow Chicagoans Droid’s Blood, as Future Shock sound quite a lot like Broken Prayer / Droid’s Blood’s most vicious moments (though Future Shock don’t have any of the darkwave / post-punk trappings). The recording is loud and powerful (it causes everything on my coffee table to rattle around even at a moderate volume) and may well inspire you to break something. If that sounds like a good thing to you, I recommend picking this up.